Google SoC again ...
OpenOffice.org does not belong to the list this year again.
One told me someone from OOo was in charge of that, but after I asked one trusted people from Google, looks like OpenOffice.org did not apply.
I know
Alexandro Colorado applied though, but I don't know what happened. (any further information welcome)
Now, if you click on "Projects by year" on the
following link, you have the full story. Nothing in 2008, nothing in 2009.
I was mentor twice already, and anyway, I got a little chance to be one more time (FYI, there are other devs than Sun or other companies devs contributing to Ooo) . But this time will not be for OpenOffice.org Project directly. After I asked a trusted people from Google, it does appear OpenOffice.org Project did not apply. So it appears this is mostly the fault of OpenOffice.org Project (but I still do not understand what happened with Alexandro request).
So, what is the point ? Some times ago, I blogged *a lot* about sane ways to find new developers.
One of them, the Education Project is searching to attract new devs, and
has results. The Google Summer of Code is another one, ... and so on ... like the FOSDEM is another one too.
But I'm not discouraged, and I'll soon publish where we are with students projects.
Working on that, and more ... Stay tuned ;-) Update: After some private search, it appears that OpenOffice.org, applied seriously one time, even probably twice (I'm sure Alexandro did). So the problem is very probably Google. Something like -sort of- a private bash between Google and Sun. In short, it is impossible to know the exact reason, and the official -politicaly correct- version is "all projects cannot be selected"
:-/
Libellés : Education Project, Google SoC, number of OOo devs OpenOffice, OpenOffice
Feedback needed with Impress 3D OpenGL transitions on Mac OS X
With the recent changes
Thorsten Behrens did (he fixed the bad color space with the cairo canvas helper),
the 3D OpenGL transitions are now working correctly with OpenOffice.org on Mac OS X. Of course, there is probably some additional work before to consider the implementation as "ok", but at least people can test them.
For the adventurous, there is an archive available(Mac Intel only, you use it at your own risks) there (search for INTEL -> DEV300_m42_ogltrans4mac -> en-US)
Please read
this mail for further information, and don't forget to provide feedback and/or file issues assigned to me if ever you find problems.
UPDATE : anybody interested to help me can have a look on the wiki page I created for the occasion.
=>
Mac OS X Porting & OpenGL transitions with ImpressLast but not least, a big thank you to
Mox Soini(cairo implementation),
Radek Dulik (most of the OpenGL thing'ry on OpenOffice.org for Linux) and
Thorsten Behrens(Impress Expert) for his help.
To be continued ... (I hope students working on new 3D transitions will be happy :) )
Libellés : aqua, High Tech, Impress, Mac OS X, OpenGL, OpenOffice
Some news from Education Project
This Saturday, The
OpenOffice.org Education Project will be represented at
Besancon (France), for the
Libre en fete fest,
Frédéric Diaz,
Nicolas Jeudy and myself will be glad to meet you. See you !!
Next week, I'll attend
Les Rencontres de l'Orme ,
Marseille, France, 24th to 26th March, where we will work with
Sesamath, and I'll present
EducOOo, the current actions in progress, and how to join and contribute to the
Education Project, or another
OpenOffice.org Project, of course.
By the 25th evening, there will be a second event in Marseille, since I'm invited at the
Equitable Cafe . I'm impatient to meet all these guys, who mostly work for non profit associations (like EducOOo), and silently contribute to Free software use.
Yet the same week, the
27th March exactly, I'll travel until
Nantes to meet the students and the professor from Ecole Centrale Nantes, for the final presentation of the tasks the students did with us. Thanks to
Morgan Magnin, their professor who has invited me.
In the list of the feature the students worked for, we have :
- colored pen
- change the pen size, shape and so on
- eraser
- keep the changes
For further information, see the
Ecole Centrale Nantes dedicated wiki page and the screenshots
there (french, sorry).
Once I'll have found more time, I'll say some words about the next events I'll attend. Will be
InterTice and
Solutions Linux, both in
Paris, France
The bad thing in all of that, is I'll miss
Sonny Piers, who is invited to present the
Mozilla Project in my own school, means at
UTBM. Too bad :-/ (I hope I'll meet him soon though)
But that's not all : more than 10 students recently applied for projects. The first one was
Pierre Pasteau( from Epitech Paris), and since some times, there is an intensive work in progress. Recently
4 students from Seneca College applied for subjects we proposed. In particular, they will for on:
- imagine, and why not implement new 3D OpenGL transition(s) (
Jerry Tak-Wah-Pau);
- python26 migration in OOo sources (
Ladan Zahiroleslam;
- make Impress Master copyable (
Bartosz Barcicki )
- Understand the Impress Application (
Wang Frederick)
Other students in the class may choose other projects through the one we propose (see the lists below).
As you can see, we have oriented
several projects we proposed on Impress Improvement Thorsten Behrens, Graphics and Impress expert, and whom I publically say one more time a big
thank you, was so kind to be present very often on the #education.openoffice.org channel. His skills are extremely helpfull for us, and the students appreciate him a lot.
It would be great to see other devs, from e.g. other OOo applications (Calc e.g. ) join the channel, and answer/help the students.
Here is the Fun with Open Source: everybody learns form each other, and all progress. I must admit, since I'm helping students, I did a lot of progress with OOo source code understanding.
If you want to know more, e.g. have a look at the list on the wiki:
- improve Impress only list- the full listTo be continued ... """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Education Project on the wiki EducOO.org blog (french) Many thanks to
Ben Bois , author of the
EducOOo logo, dedicated to the OpenOffice.org Education Project
Libellés : Centrale Nantes, Education Project, EducOOo, Equitable Cafe, High Tech, ORME, Sesamath, Teaching OpenSource
Bad user experience and old issues never fixed in OOo
In some places, there are inconsistent dialog boxes in OpenOffice.org. Some of them have been shown by users since years, but never fixed, for -say- dark reasons.
We shouldn't underconsider such issues, because they are causing a slow acceptance of OpenOffice.org, and, more obvious, provide a bad user experience.
Just one example : Formula and Formula Shortly, the problem with this issue, is when you want to customize the menus, and you want to add the possibility to insert a Math Formula, you got a twice "Formula" choice => confusing, and not good for user experience.
Worse: if we think more deeply, this is even a design issue.
But not everything is bad in this story : reading the issue content, some people proposed an intelligent compromise (developers time is precious), like replace Formula Formula with "Formula Math" and "Formula Calc". This proposal is a good compromise, because waiting the issue to be fixed for true (mandatory), the change will avoid confusion.
I'd like to understand why, instead of simply fix this temporarly (this does not avoid to concentrate on something better), we see systematical, and administrative obstruction. If we add the language barrier, we have the current situation ...
For further information, see
issue 40747 , created : January 2005 !! ), duplicated in
issue 99333.
I hope this will progress asap ...
Libellés : High Tech, issues, OpenOffice, user experience
About the number of developers contributing to OpenOffice.org (again)
Back from FOSDEM (I'll write a word asap about it), I tried to see what happened in meantime, mainly what was committed in OOo tree.
If you remember my previous blog entry ( see
this link ), I wrote it was very easy to retrieve the most recent information, and have the number of people who commited code in some cws, for OpenOffice.org Project.
The magic link was:
CIA.vc server Now it is no longer possible, because
the stack of the recent commiters, including the sum,
disappeared.
I ignore what happened, and who did that, but that's clearly a
big regression for me, and yet another hidden information, who should be publicaly available.
Indeed, we now are in the situation where we:
- just see the (20 ?) most recent commits, nothing else
- have no idea on the number of contributors since we use svn
- cannot extract the exact content of a commit, and who did what in a cws (at least this is not as easy as it was using Bonsai, where we could even watch everything online).
I have contacted the owner of CIA.vc. Maybe he will explain me some tip, or how to proceed, to retrieve the values, and maybe more.
Libellés : Code, development, High-Tech, number of OOo devs OpenOffice
Discovering OpenSolaris and OOo build on it :)
Working with Frank Schoenheit and Pierre Pasteau on the moz2seamonkey01 cws, we had no proof our changes are ok on Solaris. The best I could do was to install OpenSolaris on a AMD XP4000+ / 3BG of RAM machine. After some garbage (I'm discovering this strange OS), I finally understood how to install -sort of- development environment.
And after some little changes I'll commit soon, I was even able to build seamonkey.1.1.13 zipped archives on OpenSolaris :-)
No hack, just trying to fix issue after issue, and I'm done.
The wiki is down, but I created a new task for students: build OOo on OpenSolaris. I think this is a difficult task, and it worth a try and a serious effort. I contacted
Christian Lins, who started the effort some times ago, but if you are interested or want to give me some advice, feel free to contact me :)
To be continued (after FOSDEM ) P.S. : the wiki is down, but I put some stuff
thereLibellés : development, High Tech, OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, Teaching OpenSource
I'm going to the FOSDEM 2009
I'm going to FOSDEM '09, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting. This will be my third participation ( see the previous one there :
FOSDEM 2007 and
FOSDEM 2008)
My contribution will be a little travel in OpenOffice.org source code, under a Workshop form. It is scheduled for Sunday, February 7, at 09:00 in the
OpenOffice.org Developer Room AW1.105, and will give an overview of the
Apple Remote feature I implemented on Mac OS X, and some other changes, like removing some menu entries, or even how I did the Impress 3D transitions using OpenGL (if time allows). The workshop will mostly be Mac OS X oriented, but the content will interested all ports. The idea is to explain the logical behind the changes, and to show how things are organized.
Last but not least, I'd be glad to meet all of you !
Libellés : Bruxelles, events, FOSDEM, High Tech, OpenOffice, workshop
